Years ago, my 12 year old daughter bird sat her friend's parakeet, Kiki, for a week. This bird perched on her shoulder while she did her homework and loved to be handled. Kiki went home on a Sunday morning, and my daughter immediately began her plea for her own bird. With a dog, cat, and a water frog, I was not convinced we needed another pet. Later on that same day, we had friends over for a backyard bar-b-que. And guess what flew into one of the trees....a parakeet! I immediately thought three things:
1. What are the odds of a domesticated parakeet flying into our yard? And then what are the odds of this happening on the same day the one and only visiting parakeet went home? (At that point we had lived in the house 16 years)?
2. I needed to get my prayer list to my daughter ASAP!
3. This had to be divine intervention (aka "a miracle"), and God does have a sense of humor. There was a bird - escapee or kicked out - who needed a home. There was a girl within flying distance who so wanted a parakeet. There was a mom who would see God's hand in this mutually beneficial connection, and make an immediate investment in a bird cage.
Cleveland the parakeet was with us for about three years before he died of apparent natural causes. He was never as friendly as Kiki, preferring his cage to shoulder time. But boy could he sing!
God is omnipresent - everywhere all the time. He works both supernaturally via miracles, and through the natural abilities of His creation, including both believing and non-believing people.
Do we need miracles to have faith? Jesus performed 37 Gospel recorded miracles, yet most of His contemporaries still did not believe in Him. Do God's miracles go unnoticed in our busy world? Or do we deny them, attributing a beautiful, perfect, unexpected result to anything but God? At best, today Jesus' following might get a bump after a miracle, only to decline when the next bad thing happens.
In both the Old and the New Testament, we see a downward spike in miracles as God's story is told.
The Hebrews saw a lot of miracles over several months before they left Egypt - the 10 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. And while wandering the desert for 39+ years, they always had fresh manna in the morning, water, shoes and clothes that never wore out, not to mention the flame of God they followed around.
God's miracles steadily declined once they entered into the promised land. In their first battle of Jericho there were lots of miracles, culminating in the walls around the city tumbling down for easy defeat. But God wanted the Israelites to put forth human effort in conquering and inhabiting the land, relying on God for protection and guidance. When they followed God's commands and were obedient, times were good. When they didn't proceed as instructed, including worshiping pagan gods, no assistance, or miracles, were provided to bail them out and they found themselves tossed out of the land in exile.
Still in the Old Testament 440 years after the Israelites entered the promised land but well before the exile, obedient and faithful David defeated Goliath using only a small sling shot and a handful of rocks. His provided armor did not fit, but with David's faith in God and God's protection, the giant was miraculously defeated.
Roughly 1000 years after King David, Jesus (in human form) also often used earthly materials to accomplish God's will. His first miracle involved turning earthly water into exceptionally good wine. John 2:7-10 Jesus said to them (the servants), "Fill the waterpots with water." So they filled them up to the brim. And He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." And they took it to him. Now when the headwaiter tasted the water which had become wine, and did not know where it came from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the headwater called the groom, and said to him, "every man serves the good wine first, and when the guests are drunk then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine until now." Earthly materials were used again later in John when Jesus healed a man who had been blind since birth. Johns 9:6-7 He (Jesus) spit on the ground, and made mud from the saliva, and applied the mud to his (blind man's) eyes, and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam". So he left and washed, and came back seeing.
Like the Old Testament, the number of miracles decreased in the New Testament as the years passed. Only Jesus' 12 apostles (minus Judas plus Matthias) and convert Paul had miraculous healing abilities similar to what we saw with Jesus. They healed the sick and the lame, and Peter and Paul even brought life back to the dead. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they were given miraculous healing powers not for their glory, but to spread the good news of Jesus. But the leaders of the churches they started did not have the same healing powers. Faith in Jesus is what brought salvation, and that is what the churches shared.
God promises blessings from obedience. These blessings may seem miraculous (a homeless parakeet finding my daughter), or mundane (my ability to afford a $40 bird cage for the aforementioned parakeet). We should count on this obedience/blessing correlation since God promised it. Deuteronomy 28:1-2 (Moses speaking) "Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the Lord your God, being careful to do all His commandments which I am commanding you today, that the Lord your God will put you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come to you and reach you if you obey the Lord your God."
We are to follow God, not demanding nor counting on miracles. Faith that is dependent on proof via a new miracle is not a fully developed faith since it relies on additional proof of love/blessing. God's greatest miracle is beautifully explained in John 3:16 (Jesus talking) "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. We do not need more miracles. To receive the ultimate blessing, we just need to believe in the miracle of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
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